Mother Lode: I like it when my geese return home, even if they leave their feathers everywhere

Just about every morning, I get up around 5 a.m. to take my dog for a walk. Although I am not by nature a morning person, I thoroughly enjoy this quiet time of the day, taking in the sites of my neighborhood, listening to the sound of the many birds and getting a little exercise.

Usually, Dixie and I head to Glenmere Park for some part of our walk. Beginning in April, its particularly fun to watch the ducks and geese with their babies. This year, there were several families of Canada geese raising small flocks of chicks.

It's interesting watching geese grow up. It's a quick process by human standards. They start as these cute, fuzzy chicks, and within a week or so they morph into gangly, scruffy mini-geese. In a few weeks, they start go look like slightly smaller versions of their parents. They still hang out with Mom and Dad, but you can tell it won't be long before they go off on their own and start their own little geese families.

It's a little like raising older teenagers. They kind of look like adults. They sometimes act like adults. They start to think like adults. They even often get mistaken for adults. But they aren't quite adults.

I have a good friend whose daughter recently moved back in with her. College roommates just didn't work out, and it made sense for her to return home. This friend, who is single, was really enjoying having the house to herself. She started doing a lot of projects around the home, redecorating and cleaning up the remnants of raising children. Then suddenly, this teenager is back displaying old habits and disrupting the peace my friend had created.

She isn't resentful, but she is little annoyed. After all, her daughter is an adult. She should put her dishes in the dishwasher and throw her garbage in an actual trash can. She should keep her own bathroom clean. But all that doesn't always happen.

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I fight the same battles. Even though my kids look like adults, they somehow revert to children when they are in their own home. They make messes they don't have any interest in cleaning up. They don't see any reason to wipe up a spill or refill the toilet paper. And the shoes. Oh, the shoes. My daughter takes them off whenever she stops. She never puts them away. Even if I gather them up and throw them to the bottom of the stairs for her, they sit there for weeks.

It's an interesting phenomena. Teenagers want to be treated as adults. They want the freedom and independence. They want the respect. But they don't always want the responsibility.

I often laugh at my older daughter. She has lived on her own for several years now and really, for the most part, takes care of herself. She was having an allergic reaction recently, and my husband and I advised her she probably needed to see a doctor. She is really too old to see the pediatrician who has treated her for years, so my husband got the name of a doctor near her and told her to make an appointment. But she kept putting it off.

Finally, I said, "When are you going to get into that doctor?"

She replied, in a semi-whining voice, "Being an adult is hard." I know she was mostly joking, but there was an element of truth there.

Sometimes it's not only us parents holding onto the youth of our children. Sometimes it's hard for our kids to let it go, as well.

Someday soon, I know my little geese will learn to fly and be gone. And then the shoes strewn about the house and the dirty dishes in the sink won't seem like such infractions. They know they always have the home nest to return to if they need a little loving care. Not permanently, mind you, but certainly for a visit.

— Theresa Myers is the director of communications for Greeley-Evans School District 6 and lives in Greeley with her husband and two teenage daughters. She can be reached at myersfreelance@msn.com.